Polishing stones

I have a tumble polisher that I use for finishing silver jewellery. You can also use them for tumble polishing stones but it takes an age and they don’t look as good as the polished stones you can buy. Those are done in huge commercial polishers. I have some favourite stones in a bowl of water which brings out the colours and patterns. Painting with a good clear varnish also works, or embedding them in resin. The best finishes do cost the most.

Clean them and simply paint over with good quality PVA glue. (carefully, leaving a bit to rest on the surface while the rest dries.

PVA glue dries clear and gives the stones a great shine.

There are also a range of varnishes on sale (just googled) for stone.

Personally I don’t think the varnished ones look anything like as good as the polished one I ve been toying myself but they are expensive and then there’s the cost of the electricity because I think they take a while to polish don’t they ?
I don’t know too much about it so I ll wait to see if anyone’s got one

I had a tumble polisher but gave up on it as it took so long to get a decent finish and was also very noisy!

Tumble polishers are very noisy!
Like kitchen appliances they often get 'lost' at the back of the garage.
Could you ask your local crafting or sustainable living group if anyone has one that you could use for your stones before you make an investment?

I understand that lots of people run them in their garage because of the noise.
If you don't have too many I'd try to find someone locally and ask them if they would tumble yours for you if you covered their costs.

I gave up on the idea of tumbling stones when I found out how long it takes and that you need to put them through different grades of polishing grit. That, and the initial expense of a good tumbler put me off. I’m stuck them in a jar of water - it was cheaper!

I just googled and you need to have the machine running constantly for nearly a month!
Is this right?

I had one. They give a far better finish than varnishing. The downsides were too much for me….they do take days. You need to regularly take them out and change down to ever finer grits and polishes…a bit like when you use sandpaper on wood. And they certainly are noisy. You wouldn’t want it in hearing distance, mine was in the attic! You will find that stones have different hardnesses so some will get worn away. Blossomings suggestion of a bowl of water sounds good. My polished ones are in a narrow tallish plain glass vase so maybe one those filled with water? I think I’d try that first.

That sounds about right Fanny, certainly rather more than a fortnight

Oh goodness. I never thought it was so long and complicated.
Thanks for the suggestions.

I think I’ll go with the glass jar with water approach!

If you do put them in a jar of water be careful where you put the jar. When my DD's were small we had a big collection from Shingle beaches plus a few fossils. They put it in full sunlight and the smell was awful. You need to give them a really good scrub in soapy water and even add a few drops of bleach